Bumble Bees and Swirling Silver Snowflakes

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing well! I've been busy traveling, having guests, and working in the garden. No, I haven't. That's a bold-faced lie. 

I don't know where time goes. I blame Covid. Ever since it arrived on the scene, I swear huge chunks of my time just evaporate. Or else I'm not just taking daily naps, I'm taking wide-awake naps sitting at my desk! I asked Hammy, but he didn't answer because he was napping. You see what I mean?!

But, hey, I did manage to make a coupla really complicated, colored, and layered card designs to share. Nope. Stop lying. Slap.

Onefer

How cute is this? And go me for using such ancient goodies! The NBUS sediment is from Paper Smooches. I gold heat-embossed it onto the card base under the vellum: 

Then I overlaid the pretty piece of vellum from Hot Off the Press over the card base. The dotty border and blue-winged bees are printed on it. Over that I attached a resin bee charm that I've had for ages. QACAS!

Challenges

• Less Is More: Use vellum.
• Cardz 4 Galz: 3 of anything (bees).
• Perfectly CAS: Emboss.

Twofer

For this design I used one of several NBUS (😏) 3D embossing folders I purchased from Simon Says Stamp recently. This one is cleverly called, "Swirling Snowflakes." I have too many sheets of beautiful glittery paper which I find difficult to use, but these 3D e/fs work beautifully with any color! The metal sediment says, "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas." I intertwined the silver and white ribbon (ribbon!!) through it and added a snowflake brooch cut in silver.

Challenges

• Rudolph Days: Anything Goes Christmas. Squeaaaaking in!
  
• Addicted to Stamps and More: Christmas.
  
• Can You Handle the Pressure? Anything Goes (without the optional twist).
  
• Peace on Earth: Christmas. What do we see in every photo on the mood board? Snowflakes!
  

(Hammy has the long Labor Day weekend off. He's gone to visit a friend over on the cool coast because it's going to be 100°-109° here for the next week.)

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I stole this funny from Facebook for your enjoyment!

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Enjoy your days! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse, being a follower, and leaving me some love!

*Life is too short!

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling: Click CTL + Home. Click the Home tab under my blog banner which resets the post. Click Page Down to reach the end of the post. Click Comments and a pop-up box opens. Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel! Mwah! (p.s. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Thank you!)

Today Is a Good Day!

Hello Stamplings!

I know, I'm back pretty quickly, but before they close, I want to support a few challenges with a QACAS OLC (quick and clean and simple one-layer card).

But first, sorry, it was rude of me not to ask how you're doing? The Heat Dome over the US and parts of Europe is like something out of a science fiction movie. Since we can't escape it, then we just have to decide that today is a good day to have a good day!

Peeking from the side of my card is a portion of a NBUS flower stamp from Craft Emotions. It doesn't say on the packaging, but I think they are magnolia flowers. I've done the direct-to-stamp inking and spritzing technique in Ukranian blue and yellow colors. The sediment is unmarked. After I touched up the image with my Ziggies and colored pencils, I ran the card through my Gemini using the SU Subtle e/f. I love how the sun lit the texture so it looks like the background is made of stucco.

Challenges

• The Flower Challenge: Blue and yellow.
  
• Less is More: Just one image. May include words.
  
• The Paper Players: A CAS challenge from Jaydee: One-layer card.
  
• Perfectly CAS: One-quarter.

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No Twofer today, but I'll leave you with a couple of eggcorns. I haven't shared any in a long time:

• escape goat, instead of scape goat.
• hearbuds, instead of ear buds.
• plate mats, instead of place mats.
• radar detester, instead of radar detector.
• real goal-getter, instead of real go-getter.
• very close veins, instead of varicose veins.

You gotta love 'em. Seems like every family has one or two. Does yours? You prolly remember my family favorite was my Aunt Alzada's: "hard roll to hold," instead of "hard row to hoe."😂

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse, being a follower, and leaving some love!

*Life is too short!

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling: Click CTL + Home. Click the Home tab under my blog banner which resets the post. Click Page Down to reach the end of the post. Click Comments and a pop-up box opens. Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel! Mwah! (p.s. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Thank you!)

Knock, Knock!

Hello Stamplings!

It's me! I've missed you and it's so great to be back! I wasn't planning on being gone so long, but when it comes to health, plans can go out the window. First of all, thank you for your notes, cards, calls, and comments sending me your best wishes and cheering me on! Mwah!

Being back in the Playhouse creating, even for short periods, has done wonders for my mental health. I have even managed a coupla cards to share! My mojo juices were running low, so I turned to challenges for the schpark I needed to get them flowing. As ever, thank you challenge teams!

Onefer

This NBUS Altenew stamp and die set is called "Book Club." I stamped the image in black, heat-embossed it in clear, and painted with watercolors. There are several fun stamps for the center circle to use in a book or a journal, but I bought it just because I loved the flowers, composition, and versatility for any card sediment. 

Wow, you might think, that's a lot of schplattering, but I know you understand that poor Hammy, after five weeks of no winking and no schplattering, had an absolute inky blast and I let him go until he tuckered himself out. 

(In case you wondered, I didn't think it was fair for Hammy to be listless and bored while I was laid up, so I arranged for him to visit all his offspring and their offspring and their offspring ... let's just say he was always on the go and I think he's quite relieved to be home. My productivity will be low for a while yet, which is just fine with him!)

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Make your mark.
  
• Color Hues: Pink and green.
  
• HLS Watercolour: A/G.

Twofer

As I was looking through my challenge list, I happened to notice another, similar challenge in Blogland, so I stamped and heat-embossed another image to make this pink and gold Easter card. This time Hammy happily winked the flowers and then, while he was napping, I added some subtle gold schplatters to keep the card CAS.

Challenges

• Four Seasons: A/G Spring.
  
• Less is More: Pink and gold.
  
• Perfectly CAS: Die cuts.

Nurse Nellie

So what happened was, the hip replacement surgery went well, but about a week after wards, all my autoimmune maladies played up and set back my recovery. (Today's challenge: use malady in a sentence. It's such a lovely word, much nicer than disease or ailment.)

Anywhizzle, things settled down little by little and I often found myself rejoicing to have finally "turned the corner!" Then, oops, I discovered as I kept turning corners that I was actually in a maze! A maze zing! But I persevered and then wallah, I found my way out!

Part of the process of recovering is to walk, walk, walk. My doctor starts his patients out on a walker, then on to a cane, and then just your own two feet. As many of you know, before my surgery, The Mister, Nellie, and I walked between one and two miles every morning. I wish you could see how becited Nellie gets when it's time to walk! She LOVES it. So, of course, she struggled to understand the change in our daily routine.

As I did my laps around the house, I would pass through the living room where Nellie was on the coach, er, couch. One day I used the magic "walk?" word and said, "C'mon, walk with me." Well, I didn't have to ask her twice and from that point on, several times a day she followed behind me up the hall, through the main part of the house, and back down the hall. Rinse repeat. It was adorable and she helped keep me going!

I will try and get back on a schedule and make a plan in terms of crafting, blogging, and visiting little-by-little.

And then there's the fact that I'm a huge fan of spring cleaning. Do you get that bug in the spring?

I think it's something I carried over from growing up in the Midwest where winters can be long and harsh. It was just the best feeling when the weather warmed up so the windows could all be opened and everything was washed from top to bottom while the fresh air blew through! I think it will feel especially good this year. Being able to keep our own affairs and belongings in order brings a sense of calm, productivity, and accomplishment in a time when there is so much turmoil in the world.

Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

*Life is too short!

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling: Click CTL + Home. Click the Home tab under my blog banner which resets the post. Click Page Down to reach the end of the post. Click Comments and a pop-up box opens. Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel! Mwah! (p.s. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Thank you!)

Krafty Chicks ~ CAS (Clean and Simple)

Hello Stamplings!

I hope this finds you keeping safe and feeling well. We had a great anniversary weekend with blue sunny skies and warm temps for January. We'd rather have rain this time of year, but it's hard to complain when so many of you were/are blanketed with ice and snow.

Thank you to everyone who played in the Krafty Chicks "Christmas" challenge last week! I'm enjoying being the Guest Designer for this month. It is the third Thursday of January which means that this week our theme is "CAS" ~ clean and simple. Here is my card to inspire you:

This card could not be more QACAS. I embossed the front panel using the Subtle e/f from SU. Then, using an unmarked NBUS stencil with various sizes of circles, I blended rainbow colors using CP inks and my makeup brushes. (Once again, I had to hunt down the brush I use for red ink because a certain adorable hamster was using it to put a little blush on his cheeks.) 

The largest circle was blended using Brilliance gold ink which made it very schimmery so, natch, Hammy applied his winker to the other circles to make them shine, too. I added highlights with my white gel pen. The sediment is one of those plastic die cuts that came in a pack of balloons, confetti, etc. And that's it, uber CAS!

I look forward to seeing your creations! You can find all the details and the linky tool on the Krafty Chicks blog. 

I'm also playing in these challenges:

• Alphabet Challenge: U for Unequal (big and small).
  
• Seize the Birthday: Anything goes (no toppings).
  
• Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Fun with stencils.

Twofer

I've made a second CAS design. For this one, I overlayed a die-cut rectangle as a stencil and brushed a background using CP shades of purple. Over that I placed one bud from MFT's Buildable Bouquet set, colored to match by me, glossified to high heaven by Hammy. I added a teeny sediment with love.

Challenges

• Perfectly CAS: Flowers.
  
• The Flower Challenge: Monochrome.
  
• TIME OUT: In love.

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy and please be safe! LITS!*

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower! Please let me know you came by so I can be sure and return the flavor!

*Life is too short!

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling: Click CTL + Home. Click the Home tab under my blog banner which resets the post. Click Page Down to reach the end of the post. Click Comments and a pop-up box opens. Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel! Mwah! (p.s. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Thank you!)

For YOU, My Monkeys

Hello Stamplings!

To those of you celebrating today, Happy Father's Day! We will be going over to our son's later this afternoon. The twins have jobs for the summer now, but they will end their shifts in time to join us for dinner. I know. I can't believe they are 16 either! I'll try to remember to get a photo.

And speaking of trying to remember, I'm going make an effort to create with my flower images more often. I think I've told you before, I buy a lot of floral stamps, dies, and stencils, and when I pin, bookmark, or file someone's image to CASE later, ninety percent of the time it's a floral card. Yet, slap my biscuit, I rarely reach for flowers when I get an idea for a card; it's usually critters! (Possibly I'm being influenced by a certain hamster?)

So yesterday, I made TWO flower cards! Gome!

Onefer

Not only that, but it's a NBUS set! This sweet set is called Magnolia and it's by Craft Emotions. I'll be using the other beautiful images soon and coloring them in the more traditional pink hues, but it was fun painting this one in blue and yellow. I used my Ziggies and Hammy added just a light touch of winking so the blue and yellow didn't mix to make green. The sediment is from Verve and the frame is Pointed Rectangle Frames by poppystamps.

Challenges

• AAA Birthday: Flowers.
  
• Less is More: Pale blue and yellow.
  
• Perfectly CAS: One corner.
  
• The Flower Challenge: Clean and simple.

Twofer

This was really fun. It is also NBUS, this time by Crafter's Companion for Gemini. The package contains an embossing folder and stencils. You emboss first and then there are two stencils so you can place them over the embossing and color some or all of the dandelions. So there is wonderful texture from the e/f and the stencils make it very easy (although not perfect, lol) to blend color on the puff balls. I used my blending brushes and CP inks.

The sediment is from Tim Holtz's Snarky Small Talk booklet. I don't know how I've missed these, but better late than never. There are dozens of really funny sticker sediments, so prepare yourself for seeing a lot of them since they are right up my sarcastic alley! Especially now that I'm of a certain age where what little filter I used to have is starting to fray away completely. Oh, dear!

Challenges

• Just Us Girls: Color week: orange, poppy red, and hot pink.
  
• Let's Squash It!!: Nature meets watercoloring.
  
• Simon Says Stamp Monday: Beautiful blooms.
  
• Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers: T is for texture.

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REMINDER: The June Twofer Card Challenge ends on the 24th, so there is still time to play! The prompt is 🌞SUNSHINE!🌞 so if you're making a sunny summer card, why not make two and join in? I'd love to see you there!

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy and keep safe! LITS!*

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower! Please let me know you came by so I can be sure and return the flavor!

*Life is too short!

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling: Click CTL + Home. Click the Home tab under my blog banner which resets the post. Click Page Down to reach the end of the post. Click Comments and a pop-up box opens. Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel! Mwah! (p.s. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Thank you!)